


topic of your choice

by lesbianferrissbueller



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Billy Hargrove & Maxine "Max" Mayfield Have a Good Relationship, Character Analysis, Essays, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Good and Evil, Homework, Hospitalization, M/M, Post-Season/Series 03, Recovery, Sibling Bonding, Steve Harrington is a Sweetheart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:41:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22875703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianferrissbueller/pseuds/lesbianferrissbueller
Summary: “What are you working on?”Max wasn't surprised anymore when Billy took interest in the things she did. “English homework.”“Essay?”“Yeah.”“What on?” He shifted closer to her where they were both sitting on his hospital bed. The tube of the IV drip attached to his arm lifted up from where it hung over the edge of the bed as he moved.“Uh,” She looked up from the notebook in her lap to him to respond. “Morality.”“That’s a big fucking fish to fry for a high school freshman.” He laughed a little, learning to read over her shoulder. His voice was still so gravelly, even after a month and a half.  He slid a finger across the sentence at the top of the page. “This the prompt?”“Yeah.”Prompt #3: What does it mean to be a good person?
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington, Maxine "Max" Mayfield/Lucas Sinclair, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 216





	topic of your choice

“What are you working on?”

Max wasn't surprised anymore when Billy took interest in the things she did. “English homework.”

“Essay?”  
“Yeah.”

“What on?” He shifted closer to her where they were both sitting on his hospital bed. The tube of the IV drip attached to his arm lifted up from where it hung over the edge of the bed as he moved. 

“Uh,” She looked up from the notebook in her lap to him to respond. “Morality.”

“That’s a big fucking fish to fry for a high school freshman.” He laughed a little, leaning to read over her shoulder. His voice was still so gravelly, even after a month and a half. He slid a finger across the sentence at the top of the page. “This the prompt?”

“Yeah.”

_Prompt #3: What does it mean to be a good person?_

“That is a _stupidly_ philosophical prompt.”  
“I picked it.”

“You picked a stupid prompt.”

“Well, the other two options were about a book we were supposed to read over the summer.”

“And you didn't read it?”

“Obviously not.” She almost laughed, but didn’t. Summer only got a laugh cause otherwise you'd cry about it.

“You’re a _terrible_ student.” He grabbed the pencil she was holding away from her to add an apostrophe to an ‘it’s’ she had written on the page. 

Max didn’t have a chance to respond, because a knock at the door announced Steve’s presence. 

Soon as he stuck his head in followed by the lanky-rest-of-him, Billy turned to Max.  
“Security, get this man out of here.”

“Since when am I security?” Max let her pencil-holding-hand fall onto the page. 

“Since just now.”

“Do you actually want me to leave?” Steve looked just confused enough to ask.

“No, dumbass.” Billy smiled at him. 

“Ok, cool.” Steve slid into his regular spot in the chair right next to Billy’s bed. 

Whenever Steve sat down, he grabbed Billy’s hand on autopilot. Billy let him almost every time. 

Steve came bearing gifts, he always came bearing gifts. Sometimes flowers, sometimes tapes for the tape deck/radio that Billy had in his room, one of Steve’s own t-shirts that Billy hardly ever took off, and one time a cool rock he found to which Billy responded, ‘you are so fucking weird.’ But usually, he brought books. He brought books today: _Ulysses_ and _Catcher in the Rye_. 

Billy dismisses the copy of _Catcher in the Rye_ with an ‘I’ve already read this,’ and tosses it on the pile of finished books on his side table. Then he sees _Ulysses_.

“Oh thank fuck.” Billy grabs the book out of his hands, immediately opens it. “I finished _East of Eden_ yesterday morning, almost died of boredom after.”

Billy couldn't smoke while he was hospitalized. Or work out. Or walk around for extended periods of time or really breathe properly at all, so reading was his go-to. Reading, talking and playing cards with whoever was there. 

Some days, Billy’s like this, talkative, cynical but still smiling, bent but not broken- good days. 

Some days, he doesn't talk at all. He just sits in bed and looks down, staring a hole into the hospital bedding. And he doesn't seem angry like he used to. He just seems… a little dead. Like maybe even three doctors and all those meds and a million pints of blood didn't really save all of him. 

It’s days like that he won't let Steve in. 

He doesn't always let Max in, either. 

He just won't answer the door, or he’ll tell the nurse he wants to be alone, and Max and Steve will both just worry. 

The day after Steve gives Billy _Ulysses_ is a day like that, when Billy won’t see them. 

A day like it hasn't happened in a while. 

Steve is driving Max home- because he always picks her up to take to the hospital when he can- and she doesn't get out of the car right away when he stops in front of her house that she hates because Billy’s not in it anymore. 

“Hey,” She says, and he looks up. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.” Steve tells Max almost anything she asks about now; when they thought Billy was dead for those few hours, they just hung on to each other. Steve does better when he has someone to take care of.

“Aren't you sad, when he won’t let us in?” Max asks.

Steve bites at his lip a little. “I mean… yeah. But, you know, I get it. He’s… he’s just scared.”

“Are you?”

“Scared?”

“Yeah.”

Steve smiles a little, kinda sad. “No. I’m not.”

One afternoon, Max asks Steve what he thinks it means to be a good person, and he blows a puff of air out and makes a face. 

“That’s, hoo, that's a thinker.”

Max laughs a little. 

“Dunno. I don’t know. Maybe like, just, like, being one of those people that does good stuff? I honestly couldn't tell you.”

Billy had been in a bad mood all week. Probably because on Saturday he’d been working under the assumption that he could be discharged from the hospital in the next few days. And then on Sunday, the bouts of vomiting came back in nearly full force so he couldn't eat and they had to give him fluids again and run yet more tests and he was told he’d be staying for at least another week. Maybe two. Which may as well be forever, if you asked him.

And to ‘hang in there, you’ll be better in no time.’ But after everyone left him alone for the night he cried again, which he had been trying to stop doing because it hurt. Everything hurt still, all over. 

At first, being in the hospital hadn't been so lonely. It had sucked, and been painful and traumatic and all that, but it seemed like everyone else had been hospitalized as well. Steve with possible brain damage, El with the most weirdly broken leg any of the doctors had ever seen, and everyone else coming to see all of them. 

Billy hadn't even let people come see him most of the time, right at the beginning, still paranoid. More so than he ever let on. But he always let Steve in. And Max. And El, which was weird, but he felt like he knew her. Silent mutual respect. He was kind of weirded out the first time she came to visit him, then less and less over time. But now it was just Max and Steve that came by. 

And it was nice, mostly because Max relying on him made him feel less useless, and because when Steve came by and they could be alone, they didn't have to worry about anything because Billy’s assigned nurse had ‘seen stranger.’ She’d said that to Billy after one of the first times Steve came by, when his lip still had stitches under it. Because it was hard to keep those kinds of secrets when it came to life and death. Ask any young man in the Castro. 

Billy won’t let Max and Steve by twice in the same week. It worries both of them.

Max asks Lucas what he thinks it means to be a good person, and he says “Oh you picked _that_ prompt?” And she says “Yes now answer the question.” and he sits with his legs out and his arms crossed and his head tilted like he's really thinking about it before extending a finger to make his point. 

“I think being a good person is like, being good to other people. If you're nice and like, selfless and stuff.”

Then he looks at Max with a little smile and says “Like, I think you’re a good person. You’re mean, but you're nice, too.”

She makes a face at him.

One Saturday, when Max gets to the hospital late and Steve’s already there, she can hear arguing through the door, and when she walks up to it, Steve steps out and goes: “Hey. Max.”

“Hey.”

“I uh, I have to go, but.. See you later, yeah?” He pushes past her. 

“Yeah,” she says.

Billy’s pissed off when she gets inside his room, she can tell. It's almost reassuring that he still has it in him to be angry. 

He looks up and sees her. “Maxine.”

She rolls her eyes before hopping up to sit on the end of his bed. 

They don't talk for a bit. Then:

“Billy?”

“What.” He doesn't look up from his book. 

“What, um,” Max blinks away the image of Billy's bloodied and blacked body that plasters itself behind her eyelids sometimes. “What do you think makes a person, like, good?”

Billy’s tone flattens a little, but he still shrugs causally. “This for your dumb essay?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, ask someone else. I don’t know. Ask Steve. He’s a good fucking person.” Billy mumbles the last bit.

Long pause. 

“Are you guys... ok?” Max asks Billy. 

“Yeah, we're fine.” Billy says. And means it. He just also sounds sad. 

“Ok, what do you think it means to be a good person?” Max asked El last, taking notes as they sat together at lunch, El being allowed to go to high school now. 

“I think,” El squinted into the sunlit quad of Hawkins High. “That people aren’t good or bad. I think they do good and bad things.”

“Right but, people are like, predisposed-”

“Predisposed?”

“Like, they’re wired to make one kind of decision more, good or bad.”

“No,” El shook her head. “Rare. Not common. Maybe some, but most people are not good or bad. They _do_ good or bad. Maybe they learn to, maybe they don't. Like Billy. Many bad things, but some? Very good.”

Max smiled a little. “Yeah?”  
“Yes. Like at Starcourt. And he makes some people happy. You. Steve. Like that”

Max knew that El knew about Steve and Billy. El wasn't at all opposed, knowing nothing about the politics of sexual orientations and firmly believing that love was the stuff of fairytales. 

Max hoped El never had to learn that fairytales are rare.

Max tells Billy what she's writing about after she finishes the first draft of her essay, trying to shake a cramp out of her hand. 

He says “How's writing going?” and she says “Good,” and then: 

“El says she thinks good people are just people that do good things.”

“Well she’s like thirteen and from a _lab_ sooooo-”  
“Can you be less of a dick? This is important.”

“I can’t. Its a blessing and a curse-”

“I think you’re a good person.” Max cuts him off. 

Billy doesn't talk. He just stares at her, eyes narrowed, brow furrowed, mouth tugging down. 

“You know you were really shitty for a while, but then you did some good things, with me, and you know, with Steve and in general. And I think even if you weren't before, you're a good person now.”

Billy doesn't respond still. Then, he nods. Just once. He’s not agreeing, he's just acknowledging what she said. 

“I love you.” Max says. She just wants to. She never expects him to say it back.

Billy takes a pause before he responds. “Love you, too.” 

She still likes that he says it back now. 

“Max thinks I’m a good person.” Billy says one evening when it's just him and Steve alone in his hospital room. 

“Well you did, like, die for her, soo-” Steve’s almost through a cup of green jello.  
“Do you think that?” Billy asks suddenly. 

Steve stops where he’s standing at the end of Billy’s bed, jello cup in hand. He looks away, then back to Billy, like what he’s saying should be obvious. “...Yeah.”

“Why?”

Steve’s brow knits together, like he’s really thinking about it. “Dunno.”

Billy looks more sort of vulnerable than he usually does. It makes Steve sit back down on the bed so he can at least touch Billy, knee to knee, since Billy won't let Steve be too affectionate today. 

“I mean, obviously, you know, you’re good when it _counts_ .”  
“But you thought I was before that.”

“Yeah, I mean. You’re good to me and stuff.”

Billy rolls his eyes, like he’s trying his hardest not to close off again. 

“And I always knew you _could_ be good.” Steve keeps going. “But maybe I'm like, biased or whatever. Soon as you like, got good, you gave good. But that’s how that works anyway.”

Billy leans his head against Steve’s shoulder. Then he's grabbing Steve’s arm to set around his own shoulders and pressing his face against Steve's chest and hugging him really close, letting himself be held. 

“Thanks.”

Steve smiles a little. “Sure.”

Billy’s doing better again. He really will get discharged in a week. 

Max gets an A- on her essay. The teacher leaves a note at the end: 

_Oddly genuine and compelling. Well done._


End file.
